We’re a rock band from Chicago. In the winter of 2004, three musicians responded to a classified ad in the Chicago Reader. We all met, decided that we didn’t hate each other, and formed a little band. Six months later we found ourselves on a California tour, and eighteen months later, we moved to California, abandoning Chicago for warmer climes.

We’ve played at places you’ve heard of like the Viper Room, Spaceland, and the Whiskey in Los Angeles, The Hard Rock Cafe in Memphis, and Double Door in Chicago, but we tend to have a much better time at places you might not have heard of like the country’s best dive bar, Siberia (New York City), a joint called Anarchy Library (Downy, CA), and Vinny’s, a bar in Bakersfield with a giant nature mural painted on the wall behind the stage. In June 2007 we toured the country, playing shows from Vegas to Austin to New York to Portland, to name a few.

We could rattle off a token list of influences, but that’s a bit boring. Instead, we’d rather tell you that Job listens to Slayer, Theo prefers Ween, Joel has a penchant for In Utero, and Jenn always likes some obscure band the rest of us aren’t hip enough to listen to.

People have told us we sound kind of like Smashing Pumpkins or the Pixies or U2 or the Clash or 3 Dog Night (huh?), but since none of that makes much sense, we just tell people that we write three-minute pop/rock songs with loud choruses, riffy guitars, and vocals that, well, are either “soaring,” “intense,” or “loud” — depending on the positive adjective you care to attach.

We all come from different musical backgrounds. Jenn has played with girl rock bands like Rockit Girl, Theo has played in girl punk bands like Nancy and the Knockers, Joel was once Tommy in Tommy, and Job’s stint in metal/’90s rock bands doesn’t change the fact that his nickname is “the Administrator.” Someone else is nicknamed “butter pants,” but we don’t talk about that in polite company.

We should tell you that we released our debut album, In Between, in July 2005 and our sophomore LP, onetwothreefour, in March 2007. We recorded In Between with Adam Newman and Doug McBride at Gravity Studios in Chicago (Cheap Trick, Veruca Salt, Smashing Pumpkins) and onetwothreefour with Rae DiLeo in Los Angeles (Filter, Veruca Salt, Army of Anyone).

For our third release, Grayscale, we turned to self-producing a live recording straight to analog with the help of engineer Jon Gollihugh at 459 Audio. We think this worked rather well. So please, turn it up to eleven and enjoy.